I needed to test a site in Internet Explorer 7, on Windows XP. Since I use the remarkable tool Parallels Desktop for Mac, and it gives me for all intents and purposes an actual Windows PC, I reviewed my options before installing IE7 on my XP/Parallels install. Rumors had been swirling in my head that installing 7 would deactivate IE6 forever.
I still need IE6, no way was I going to let that happen.
The Journey Begins
There is a way to install IE7 without removing IE6 — this workaround — but it only works with beta versions of IE7. I don’t want to track down and install a beta of IE7. More Googling turned up a solution fulfilled by installing Virtual PC 2004, but running a PC inside a PC on my Mac? That’s getting a little complex for my taste. I haven’t had any LSD flashbacks in months, and I don’t want to start triggering them again now. I do want to note that VPC is free, to Microsoft’s credit.
Then, after a massive bong hit, I remembered I can install more than one OS on Parallels. Voila. Better than that, Parallels allows you to clone a virtual machine. PERFECT.
I cloned my XP install, naming the new one “XP IE7″. Once that was cloned, I started up that “PC” and installed IE7 on it. Now I can test my pages on IE6 and IE7 by switching back and forth between the virtual machines.
Downsides: the clone cloned me right out of another 8GB of disk space :-|. And I have to run two virtual machines to test on both browsers.
But in the end I have a widescreen, 2GB ram, 200GB HD Intel Mac with the fast, stable OS X 10.4, and two XP PCs, all in one sweet little hardware package.
In A Larger Sense
Why does Microsoft make life so hard for developers, especially for front-end developers? Even the MSDN blog above that talks about the VPC solution seems to regard the IE6 OR IE7 choice as silly.
For a company with a CEO that was filmed sweatily chanting “developers, developers, developers” ad nauseum on a conference stage a few years ago, I find this perplexing.
Ah well. I’m out 8 Gigs, but my problem is solved due to some remarkable flexibilty in Parallels. Plug: Pick up Parallels for only $69 here.
March 9th, 2007 at 12:46 am
As my mother would say you went around your elbow to get to your thumb; to easily run multiple versions of IE try this solution: http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE - for cookie support read the comments.
March 9th, 2007 at 10:04 am
The standalone version of IE are fine for testing rendering, but are not reliable for testing any sort of client side scripting. If you need to test how the client responds to javascript, ActiveX controls, etc., you need to use a virtual machine (or a regular install).
I’ve done pretty much what Matt did under VMware on Windows. Kept one XP disk image at EI6 and upgraded a duplicate of it to IE7.